On Primary Election Day, Tuesday, June 23, 2020, I voted at Nepperhan Community Center in Yonkers. I was fortunate not to arrive until about 9am, when I found a line outside in the parking lot of perhaps 25-30 people, many of whom had already been waiting for a long time. It took another 45 minutes before I was admitted to the building to vote. I was told by election inspectors that it had taken hours before a Board of Elections employee had arrived to help them set up the voting machines. The machines we voted on were Dominion ICE hybrid printer-scanners. So these expensive new machines, apparently, did not save us any time on Election Day. Or perhaps the problem was inadequate training of poll workers.
I have already described to legislators my experience attempting to work as an election inspector. Briefly: having been trained and paid by the Board of Elections for my time at the class, I was never contacted to work, and when I phoned to inquire, I was informed by Board of Elections employee Tommy Maier that he was in the process of phoning a large number of my fellow Yonkers trainees to inform us that our services would not be needed. This surprised me, because I had heard Commissioner Lafayette explain to the Budget and Appropriations Committee that his reason for opening very few polling places was that too few inspectors were available. I wondered why the dozens of available poll workers were not distributed all over Yonkers or Westchester to allow for more polling places. The money and time the Board of Elections invested in our training went to waste.
In a subsequent conversation at the Board of Elections where I was serving as a witness to a candidate’s absentee-ballot count, Mr. Lafayette accused Westchester legislators of failing to do your jobs by refusing to purchase more Dominion ICE hybrid printer-scanners. He stated that the old scanners (the standalone “Plan A” scanners; Dominion ImageCast, I believe) that we have been using on Election Day for nearly a decade would have lengthened lines still further.
I want to refute these ideas. It is you legislators who have done your due diligence by studying the security risks associated with the Dominion ICE which, if hacked, could print over ballots after they are cast. Our own U.S. Congressional delegation is desperately trying to ban these tabulating ballot marking devices because of the risk that, if hacked, they will make a valid audit of the ballots impossible because they could print over already-cast ballots. Unfortunately, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnel has prevented votes on the PAVE Act, the SAFE Act or HR3351, among other election-security bills. It would be highly irresponsible for you to authorize purchase of voting machines with a known serious mechanical security flaw and that could become obsolete as soon as January, should the Senate majority change hands after the November election.
All computers can be hacked – even those sold as “not connected to the internet,” because any USB drive can be programmed to function as a modem, so if, for example, one Board of Elections consultant working from home had his or her computer hacked, or one vendor employee was compromised, our election administration programs could be hacked or rigged. Former FBI Director Robert Mueller has emphatically warned us that our elections are being hacked. The question is whether we will have in place an auditing process adequate to detect such hacks – as well as any random computer malfunctions, of course – when, not if, they occur. We will certainly not if the voting machines themselves can be programmed to alter the ballots. (We also need a reliable path to 100% hand count for November; unfortunately, current state law does not require a hand count in close elections until January, 2021. If our state government does not solve that problem, it may fall to you to mandate it here, as in at least New York City and Ulster County.)
At another Budget and Appropriations meeting shortly before the election, Mr Lafayette requested dozens more Dominion ICE hybrid printer-scanners, claiming that they were needed to make voting for residents of multiple precincts possible at a reduced number of polling places.
I urge you to continue to hold the line. Insist that Westchester use the same simple standalone scanners that worked for early voting in the many New York counties outside Westchester that did not purchase these expensive boondoggles. The old scanners worked for early voting in other counties because they functioned adequately to read the ballots of multiple precinct. Apparently programming them to do so was not as onerous or time-consuming a job as you and perhaps the commissioners themselves had been led to believe. Using the old scanners in Westchester – I understand we may have as many as 1400 in storage - would have sped up voting by enabling many more polling sites to be opened. It is only our commissioners’ insistence that we vote only on the Dominion ICE, and refusal even to attempt to recruit and train new election inspectors, that forced closures of most polling places and slowdowns at the polls that were open. We need to drop the Dominion ICE and use our old scanners, or if necessary replace them with updated stand-alone scanners, not expensive hybrids that could potentially hide the tracks of hackers.